I never see anything, when talking about Peter's betrayal and the people he hurt, about his parents. We know his mother was still alive when he "died", and his father might have been, too, and frankly learning that your son was killed by one of his friends, and there's almost nothing left of him, it has to be horrible.

If they're still alive by 1995, learning that he was alive all along, is a traitor, never came to see you, made you believe he was dead, and generally bowed to the darkest mage alive, well. That got to sting, too.

That being said, here Enid Pettigrew doesn't know what her son did, and Sirius is being ambiguously depressed/obsessed, so.

Chapter 4: Enid Pettigrew

Enid Pettigrew was well into her sixties, when Sirius Black escaped from Azkaban. Her son, Peter, would have been thirty-two this year. He'd been dead for almost eleven years.

Sirius Black was almost thirty-three, him. He'd spent those eleven years in Azkaban, for the murders of her son and twelve muggles, for having betrayed the Potters, for being a Death Eater. He'd turned twenty-two three days after the Potters' death, two days after Peter's, and one day after he'd been sent to Azkaban.

He'd been out eight days. Enid had learned of his escape seven days ago.

It was the thirteenth of September.

Enid had spent the last six evenings staring dumbly at an ever-growing spread of newspapers articles about Sirius Black which was taking over her dining table. Reminders of who he had been, what he had done. The lies he had told.

On Monday, two DMLE employees had visited her house, because Enid was one of the rare people who still knew something of Sirius Black, outside of school, outside of work. Most of his family had died in the years he'd spent in Azkaban, most of his friends were dead.

He'd killed her son, he'd sold out her son's friends. But before that, he'd been her son's friend.

Enid had told them she didn't know, because she hadn't seen the change. Because this wasn't what she knew of Sirius Black. Because everyone had kept secrets during the war, and she hadn't known those he was supposed to keep from those he'd kept for himself.

On Tuesday, a journalist had come, asking for a picture of Peter and his friends, if possible with Lily Potter, too. Enid had barely closed the door on the witch's blond curls that she'd started crying.

On Wednesday, she'd found that very same picture – Black and Remus and Peter at the Potters' wedding ceremony, on the 7th of March 1979 – on the Daily Prophet's latest article about the first wizard to ever escape from Azkaban on his own. Someone else had to have given it to the journalist, and Enid had been stuck with reading an article about how no one had suspected anything of Black's true allegiances, which had allowed him to get close to several key figures of the war.

Friday's article had gone a different way, by the hand of another journalist, Martha Vaughn. It had focused on Black's years of fighting against everything his family expected of him – Gryffindor House, his friends, his beliefs, his choice of career – and how even that hadn't been enough. How he'd eventually fallen in line and sacrificed his choices for his family's beliefs.

Enid wasn't sure which article she hated more – but one thing was sure, her son was dead, and Black had killed him.

And so she spent her evenings looking at articles she hated, searching for the hint they'd all missed, from witness accounts to later analyses of the events of the war. People saying how surprised they'd been, or how they'd known all along – most of those had barely even met Black, Enid could tell, and thought they knew better because of it.

Enid had buried her husband two years ago, and her son eleven years ago, and today she was alone, learning that Sirius Black was out again – after everything he'd done.

She could still remember him, back when he wasn't her son's murderer, his friends' betrayer. He'd come by, with James Potter – dead, too – and Remus Lupin – the poor man had no friends left, three murdered, and one their murderer; he was alone, just like Enid – when he could. He'd talk about how he was sorry he couldn't come more often, how his parents didn't want him to associate with...

Enid was pureblooded, but only for two generations. One of her great-grandmothers on her father's side had been muggleborn, her grandfather on her mother's side was a halfblood – most of the wizarding community considered someone pureblooded as long as they had no muggle grandparents, though some of the purist families scoffed at such "upstart" purebloods. Geoffrey, her husband, had been muggleborn himself.

Peter had been a halfblood.

Those same purist families considered the Potters blood traitors, old blood purebloods who'd been careless and allowed muggle ancestry here and there in the older generations of their family tree, who didn't care if their children married old blood, "upstart" purebloods, halfbloods or even muggleborns. The Potter family – the House of Potter, one of the thirty-seven noble wizarding Houses – was old, a noble House for six centuries, a bloodline dating back to the foundation of Hogwarts, one of the emblematic gryffindor families. Just like the Blacks were in Slytherin, the Abbots were in Hufflepuff, the Shacklebolts were in Ravenclaw.

Remus Lupin, Enid thought, was halfblood too, his mother a muggle. The Lupin name was old enough – four centuries, perhaps – but they were neither rich nor noble, or pureblooded enough to really make it into higher society.

Of course Black's parents hadn't wanted him to associate with people like them. The Sacred Twenty-Eight, especially the ones of slytherin schooling, tended to remain amongst themselves and only branch out to old blood witches and wizards, whether they were new purebloods or halfbloods, if they shared their ideology and were useful to them.

The then-teenager had needed to sneak out to even get to see his friends during the holidays. He usually managed to visit Peter about twice a summer break, and she could remember a conversation during which he'd told her, in between second year and third year, how he could only go and see his newborn cousin the same way, because Andromeda Black had married a muggleborn and the rest of the family acted as if she didn't exist anymore – all of them, except her older sister Bellatrix, and maybe that was more terrifying than comforting, considering who she'd grown up to be.

Enid loved History and genealogy, and Black had been so happy to be able to talk with someone who liked those too, but wouldn't twist any of it into blood purist propaganda. With her help, he'd started researching the branches his family had erased – like Andromeda – across the centuries.

They'd found a common ancestor in the seventeenth century – Corvus Black, with mild views on blood purity and absolute love for the newly pureblooded witch who would become his wife; their daughter hadn't kept the Black name, and that branch of the family had strayed away, slowly but surely, from what the Blacks would consider proper.

Black had visited more often after the summer of 1977 – after he'd run away from the Blacks, from his entire family, from the ones who kept him from being who he wanted to be.

Enid didn't know where it had all gone so wrong.

She didn't even know if he'd made that choice – Peter, the Potters, betrayal, blood purity – for himself or if his family had finally gotten their hands back on him, if his cousin Bellatrix had hammered a new "truth" in his head until he was barely Sirius Black anymore.

If, perhaps – a new theory, one brought by the news of his lover being sent to Azkaban for child abuse – it was Esta Goldhorn, who had insinuated herself in his life, and slowly, ever so slowly, had poisoned his mind against everything he'd managed to hold onto. If the woman who'd just been revealed as a heartless mother had perhaps spiked his drinks, changed his views for her own.

Enid shook her head, pushing back the article about Goldhorn's death in Azkaban – the same day Black had disappeared, and yet, nothing seemed to point to him as her killer, or even to her death as a murder. There was no way she could know, from a simple article, if Peter's friend – if Peter's murderer had been a victim of a woman whose beliefs Enid knew nothing of. Even if Esta Goldhorn was apparently a horrid mother, you didn't have to be a blood purist to be so.

And if Black truly had murdered her, despite the lack of evidence...

Well. Maybe she deserved it, for what she'd done to her own son. But blaming her for Black's choices, without proof, if she'd become herself a victim of his anger? It sounded like a slippery slope to Enid.

Maybe she'd caused the change which had led to her death, or maybe not.

Maybe it wasn't Black's fault that he'd changed, but he'd still laughed after Peter's murder, after the carnage he'd left in that street, after those muggles had died, after his best friend and his wife had been killed and their infant son orphaned.

He'd left his own son with that woman.

Enid had held the little Potter boy in her arms, once, when James and Lily Potter had visited Peter after his birth – one of the rare outings they'd allowed themselves, after they had to go into hiding. After Lily had to put her dreams of being a spell crafter on hold, after James had to leave the Auror Training Program, after He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named had set his eyes on their lives.

Black had loved that child, she remembered, even if he hadn't been sure what to do with a baby. He'd certainly loved his son, too, even if she'd never seen the two together, even if she'd only heard about Altair Black through Peter's tales.

That night Peter's friends had come, Enid and Black had gotten Harry to sleep by telling him about every anecdote they could remember about his family tree and history, while his parents took the opportunity for a needed early night to bed.

But the Potters were dead, their son was alone with his muggle family on his mother's side, Peter had been killed, Altair Black had been left with a witch who cared nothing for her own son, and Black was out of Azkaban.

He'd come once, for christmas. 1974. Peter had invited James and Remus, too, and they'd all come to eat with Geoffrey and her.

Enid had given Sirius a scarf, knitted black and gold, for his family and for his Hogwarts House. He'd smiled a smile so blinding, she'd almost not noticed how he wasn't eating.

Worried he wasn't feeling well, she'd asked him why.

Back then, she hadn't suspected a thing of what was going on at home for Sirius Black.

He'd smiled again, and eaten. But Enid hadn't let him fool her, not this time.

In the end, she'd learned the Blacks didn't – usually, and that was a discovery for another time, too – resort to physical violence, as you could fear from most abusive families, because they had something much more insidious in store for a child who wanted to spend Christmas with friends they didn't approve of. After all, if you took all sense of taste and smell from someone going to a festive dinner, wasn't it a fair way to ensure they wouldn't ask for it again?

Enid didn't know how often Black's parents took away his senses, what exactly warranted such a punishment, but she could barely imagine what it must be like, to grow up and be unable to reliably feel the world in any way. If that christmas had been taste and smell, who was to say it wasn't sometimes the other three?

Even if it was only ever taste and smell... Sirius hadn't eaten, then, not until she'd pointed it out to him. Later on, when Peter would write how Sirius wasn't hungry for the welcome feasts, she'd always wonder. Was that how you stopped someone from even wanting more from the world? From taking care of themselves?

Even if Black hadn't eaten much, that Christmas, he'd gotten up as soon as the snow had started falling on the Pettigrews' garden. For a whole hour, him and Peter had run around in the snow, and had tried to pelt the other two boys with snowballs.

The witch let out a strangled cry, and crumpled the nearest newspaper with frantic gestures. None of this made any sense, and she hated, she hated those people who spoke as if they knew anything, as if they knew better, as if they would have seen through the lies when no one involved had.

Sirius Black had always been a bit cold, cautious in his interactions with other people – and who could blame him, with a family like his – but he'd been able to laugh, back then. To laugh freely, and not because he'd just killed thirteen people.

He'd laughed, after their snowball fight. He'd told her he'd like to come again, one day. For Christmas.

He'd never come for Christmas again.

His parents, probably. Then the war, his job as an auror trainee – his change of heart, in the end, too.

Enid let go of the balled-up newspaper when her clock rang seven pm. It was time for her to start cooking, and she couldn't – she wouldn't – let Black's escape stop her from eating. He may have broken her already – her son's absence, Geoffrey who hadn't let Peter go, and now, this – but she wouldn't let him kill her, not like it had killed her husband.

Enid forced herself to stand up, and head for the kitchen. She didn't like using magic for cooking – she'd never quite mastered cooking charms, they ended up giving a weird taste to her vegetables – and anyway, it calmed her.

A knock on her front door stopped her.

Reaching for her wand, ready to curse out any journalist there for more blood to splash in the Prophet – after the blond woman, there had been a small, round wizard who'd reminded her of Peter, and she'd almost let him in – Enid walked to the door.

Once, in 1979, Enid had gone to her door in the same fashion. It was the war, and Geoffrey was muggleborn. Enid was also a much better duelist than her husband – she'd taught DADA at Hogwarts, the year Peter had died, and she didn't want to explain why she'd left, but it seemed obvious enough, didn't it? – fast, versatile in her spell work, even if she somewhat lacked raw power. It made the most sense for her to answer the door, back then.

Her caution hadn't been needed, that day, though much less petty than today.

The door had opened on Black and Peter, with Peter a bit out of it, slightly roughed up – but alive, oh, so alive yet.

There had been an attack on Diagon Alley, and the four boys had been there – Enid doubted it had been a coincidence, but she'd let her son keep his secrets. Peter had gotten jinxed while helping people evacuate, and Black had brought him home once the healer had cleared her boy. Black had told her he didn't want Peter's parents to worry, that it would be better if he spent the night home rather than at his bachelor flat, alone. The healers had said someone should keep an eye on him, after all.

Black had looked so, so genuine.

He'd thought of Enid and Geoffrey, even when he himself couldn't go home to reassure his own parents. When he wouldn't have wanted to, surely.

And Peter...

Peter had looked embarrassed, once you got past his crossed-eyed look, and the light bruising on his forehead. But he'd smiled at his friend, and it was obvious how grateful he'd been.

Despite everything happening outside, things were still alright – at least for them. For Peter, for Black, too.

But by the next year, Peter had become twitchy, anxious. Now, Enid couldn't help but wonder, if perhaps he'd started to see the change, even if he hadn't known what it was, yet. If her boy had felt something, without knowing what exactly, and it had put him on edge.

She wondered, too, if he'd talked to someone about it, perhaps. He certainly hadn't told either herself or her husband. If he had, perhaps...

Perhaps...

Enid opened the door, and stopped dead at the sight of who was waiting on the other side.

Sirius Black.

His dark hair was cut close, not even an inch long. Muggle clothes on, basic, from the little she knew on the matter. His face was sunken in, like a bony-colored leather stretched thin across his skull, but she'd recognize his eyes anywhere – the obligatory Black silver, this time burning with a cold rage she'd never seen on his face before.

Even now, that fire wasn't aimed at her. She could tell, as her mind took in everything she could of this encounter, her wand arm raising, the tip aimed at his jugular.

He looked vaguely healthier than on his latest Azkaban mugshot.

Black!

Enid tried to slam the door closed – failed, as he let his entire body weigh on the door – a spell on the tip of her tongue. She didn't know how much she could really manage to do to him – she never had the hatred necessary for the Dark Arts, and lesser dark magic had always left a bitter taste in her mouth. Defending herself was one thing, but attacking first was something she'd always struggled with, despite her other qualities in battle.

She was older, now, but he was far from being at peak strength, too.

In the end, it didn't really matter, did it, if she managed to stupefy him – then, a full body-bind curse too, because she wouldn't want him to wake up before she could contact the Auror Office.

Black ducked her stupefy, but Enid didn't let it stop her. She forced on the door again, and this time he couldn't stop her as he avoided the red light of her spell.

But no, she realized at the same time. His upper body might be busy, but it didn't mean he hadn't expected something, that he hadn't thought it out. He'd had to, after all. The wards wouldn't let him in so easily.

Not unless she let him in herself, or he walked in while she was standing in the doorframe.

Enid took a violent step back, but it was too late. The door slammed, not against its frame, but against Black's foot.

The wizard didn't even blink as she tried to push him outside of the wards, even if it meant she had to crush his foot.

She saw what his body looked like, after eleven years in Azkaban – she couldn't help but wonder, if perhaps pain was so present in his current reality, that this didn't change much of anything, for him.

Black pushed the door back open.

He was inside.

Enid aimed at him again, and he grabbed the tip of her wand, pointed it at the ceiling.

Neither of them let go.

"Mrs Pettigrew."

Her breathing accelerated – a flash, and she saw him, sixteen years old, joking with Peter on the couch in the corner of the living room.

Black barely even moved – but his grip on her wand was hard as steel, and he only looked at her. He didn't try anything, no, they stopped moving at that point.

That wasn't a smile on his face, not even close – and it wasn't hatred either, not for her. He wasn't, per se, threatening.

But, Enid forced herself to remember, he wasn't the teenager she'd looked through genealogy books with, the teenager she'd talked about the limit between lesser dark magic and the Dark Arts with. He had blasted Peter to pieces and laughed about it.

When he spoke again – and the moment didn't break, not at all, Enid still couldn't move a finger, and she wasn't sure if it was rational fear or something more primal, like the instinct telling you when a predator had their eyes fixed on you – she heard how abused his voice had become.

Disuse. It had to hurt.

"I'd like to let you believe Peter was a hero, Mrs Pettigrew. But I have duties, and I can't do that."

He looked around the living room, at the pictures of Peter and Geoffrey. Enid caught the moment a hard glint took his cold eyes over – and she wondered, at the moment, how you could feel such disdain for your own victim.

Unless... Unless it was about Geoffrey. She wasn't sure if she'd ever told Black her husband was muggleborn. But Peter probably mentioned it at some point.

"He never even came to see you, did he?"

She heard his teeth gritting.

"That rat."

Enid didn't understand a word of what he was saying. He couldn't be talking about Peter, of course not, Peter was dead – he'd killed his own friend, he'd killed her son, and twelve other people too, and maybe even more before that – and it wouldn't make sense to say that against Geoffrey either, because no matter what you thought of his ancestry, Geoffrey had been there with her until the end.

Enid forced herself to talk – to breathe, to react, despite his looming presence.

"What... What do you want, Bla..."

But she couldn't finish the name.

She knew him back when he was a teenager. He shared her interest for History and genealogy, and he had things to add to her knowledge on defense. He brought Peter back home, once. He might have forgotten – or perhaps the only reason she was still alive was that he did remember.

He looked at her again, and frowned. Like he'd just realized something.

"Where is Mr Pettigrew? I didn't see him come out of the flat once, since I started staking the place out to make sure no aurors were there."

Enid's words remained stuck in her throat.

So she used others. She didn't have to answer, after all, and her question remained.

"Sir... Sirius. What do you... want?"

She saw him blink – as if he'd realized the answer she couldn't give, and didn't really know what to do with that information.

She could feel the tears coming up – Peter, Geoffrey, and herself, alone in her living room as her son's murderer asked about her husband's demise.

Enid's thoughts went back to what he'd first said, the word he'd used. Duties.

When did Sirius start thinking he had to do any of these things? When did he start believing there was any value in murder, when did what He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named wanted become more important to him than anything else?

What was it that had led him to kill her boy?

How did he end up thinking that Peter, and James, and Remus, and Lily, and Dumbledore, that they were all wrong, that they weren't good people, that they deserved to die because they were on the wrong side – on the side that wasn't his own anymore?

Why else would he try to convince her that her boy wasn't a hero, when Peter tried and confronted him for his betrayal? Why, but because he thought and believed himself to be in the right – all the others to be in the wrong?

Enid had so many questions, and absolutely no desire to hear the answers – to hear a justification, to hear the change in the teenager she'd known and who would never have done any of it.

"His finger, where is it?"

His question – his answer to her question, the only one she'd allowed herself to ask – jolted her back to the fact that this was what Sirius Black had become, despite all he'd done not to be that man.

"Wh... What?"

"I asked, Mrs Pettigrew, where you put Peter's finger. I know they gave it to you and Mr Pettigrew, and I need it. Did you bury it in lieu of a corpse? Did you have it made into a death box?"

There was a moment of silence, and an ugly look crossed his face.

"I hope, for both our sakes, that you did not choose to have it incinerated."

Enid – despite the question itself, perhaps because of its absurdity – frowned. That was a muggle practice, she was surprised Black even knew of it.

"Why do you..."

But this wasn't a conversation, despite his earlier politeness. He reminded her of that with a scream.

"Where. Is. It!?"

Enid whimpered, and Black seemed to notice what he'd just done.

"I'm sorry, Mrs Pettigrew. I shouldn't have... I didn't want to yell. But I need you to tell me what you did, and. I. Need. That. Finger."

Enid had no idea who that man was, but it wasn't the boy she used to know, she was certain of it, now. Some of it was Azkaban, certainly, but even beyond that...

She didn't want to cry – not in front of him, of the wizard who'd murdered her son, who was demanding what little she had left of him – but the tears came on their own, and with them the conviction that there was no point in lying, in asking why he'd want Peter's bones of all things.

"A... A death box. We didn't have enough money for a burial plot, because Geoffrey couldn't go to work in the last years, not with the war, it was too dangerous for him!"

She gulped, and Black looked – hungry, like this would change everything, and Enid thought of her boy, her scared boy, who had still gone out every day, who had believed in his friends before anything else.

"You know, Mum. If something happens to any of us... I know Sirius will make it right."

The last time Peter said that, there was an odd tone to his voice.

She'd thought it was the fear of something happening to one of them.

"Where."

"On... On the mantel of the chimney."

He snatched her wand away – completely this time – and walked to get the death box.

It was cheap, Enid knew, but it was solemn enough. A sealed box of clear wood, with Peter's name carved on it in elegant calligraphy. Usually, wizards who couldn't afford a burial plot would have the body stripped of flesh and its bones reduced to dust, and sealed inside a death box.

With only a finger left, Enid and Geoffrey hadn't needed to pay for the dusting, only getting rid of the flesh which would otherwise rot.

Silent, she watched Black put Peter's death box in his coat. Then, he finally looked back at her.